There appears to be an end in sight for the sorry saga of the neglect of Staley Hall in Staleybridge. After being derelict for over 50-years, the grade-II listed, 400-year old house has been subject to indifference and some council apathy which has led to arson and massive deterioration in the fabric of the building. All that remains now are the outer walls – all roofs, interior walls, floors, and decoration have been lost. The building has reached such a poor condition that – although it pains me to say it – the developer’s proposal to demolish the shell and then reconstruct it as the facade for apartments does seem to be the only viable solution.

All this might have been avoided if the local council had taken this issue in hand at any time over the last few decades – such negligence is unfortunately all too common up and down the country as hard-pressed planning departments face budget and manpower cuts. Unfortunately it’s the nation’s heritage which pays the price.

Launched this week in Country Life magazine is the stunning Sheriff Hutton Park, in Yorkshire. This is a quintessential English country estate: grade-I listed house with 10 bedrooms, farm, 200 acres, lake, and parkland. The house, which dates from 1730, is in need of some modernisation but retains many of the original architectural features. So if you have in excess of £5m available this could be the perfect estate for someone who wants the benefits of an important, but manageable house, combined with the opportunity to add your own choice of (architecturally sensitive) interior.

There are always options for those who have the sensitivity to own an interesting house rather than a simply expensive one.

Shurland Hall (Image: Jackson-Stops)

Shurland Hall, Eastchurch – Kent

Shurland Hall was the gatehouse to a once impressive and important house built between 1510 and 1518 by Sir Thomas Cheyne and visited by Henry VIII in 1532 but now demolished. The final residents of the house were troops billeted there during WWI who did enough damage to ensure that it was uninhabitable. In 1996, the local council spent £200,000 to install supportive scaffolding to arrest the deterioration in the structure. In 2006, a further grant of £300,000 was made to restore the facade and roof and this work has now been completed by the Spitalfields Trust. This beautiful Grade-II* building is now for sale via Jackson-Stops for offers in excess of £2,000,000 – hopefully to someone who can complete the restoration sympathetically.

Grade-I listed Clifton Hall shot into the headlines in September 2008 when the owner walked away from the house and returned it to the mortgage company claiming that he and his family had been driven out by ghosts (‘Spooked businessman flees ‘haunted’ mansion‘). The house includes 10-bedrooms, 7 receptions, large cellars, 2.5-acres of grounds along with voices, knocks, apparitions and blood spots appearing on bed-linen. If you don’t believe in ghosts then this house could be an absolute bargain; an advert in the Home section of the Sunday Times (15 November 2009) lists the price as £2.5m but on the agents website it’s down to £1.5m. So pack your holy water and book a viewing.

Property details: ‘Clifton Hall‘ [FHP Living] (interesting that none of the big agencies have taken this instruction…)

The 7th Annual Georgian Group Architectural Awards have again highlighted that there are still those who will take on a neglected house and breathe new life into it. Of particular interest is the winner of the ‘Restoration of a Georgian Country House‘ category, Cairness House in Aberdeenshire.

This interesting and elegant house was originally built in the 1790s as the centrepiece of a 9000-acre estate by the architect James Playfair for Charles Gordon. The house remained with the family until 1938 after which it unfortunately experience a prolonged period of decline over the next 70 years including use as a farmhouse and even bedsits, and was riddled with dry rot. Julio Soriano-Ruiz and Khalil Hafiz Khairallah are to be loudly applauded for showing that these houses can be restored and that the excuses of the developers, whose claims of dry rot has resulted in the demolition of other houses up and down the country, should never be accepted at face value.

It’s a familiar story; an old house with a bit of ground has become a bit dilapidated but rather than it being carefully restored as a single family home a developer snaps it up as an ‘opportunity’. Despite the obvious wealth of Cheshire (or perhaps because of it) approval has almost been given for Bewsey Old Hall to not only be converted into seven apartments but for *48* more units in six other blocks to be built on stilts in the grounds. So the house goes from being the excuse to enable building to a mere architectural fascinator in the centre of large scale development.

Luckily the local councillors have collected thousands of signatures opposing the plans and are fighting a rearguard action despite the decision of the Government planning inspector who has crazily approved this vandalism. One final hope is that a parcel of Government-owned land which is required to enable the development may yet not be sold. If the council are successful, here’s hoping that someone with money can buy the house and land and bring this house back to life.

Lord and Lady Gerald Fitzalan Howard of Carlton Towers had hoped to raise £1m to pay for repairs to his family home through the sale of silverware, furniture and paintings from the Towers. Whilst it’s always sad when the contents of a house are sold to fund repairs, thankfully, the sale went better than expected and raised over £2m which will hopefully secure the future of one of the most interesting Gothic houses of the North East.

Concerns have been raised that the proposed route of the £34bn Network Rail project to provide a high-speed link to Scotland will severely compromise many areas of natural beauty and a large number of listed buildings including the setting of the Grade-I listed West Wycombe Park in Buckinghamshire.

The main problem lies in the fact that to achieve high speeds, the 1,500 miles of railway lines would need to be laid in the most direct line between two locations. This would mean that the line would simply carve through the landscape, destroying areas of Special Scientific Interest and unspoilt countryside in the heart of the Chilterns such as the Misbourne valley.

One proposal of particular concern is to build tunnels beneath High Wycombe but the Chilterns Conservation Board (CCB) fear that the tunnel would surface near the historic village of West Wycombe – threatening the stunning setting of the architecturally important West Wycombe House. The Italianate-style house with it’s rococo gardens were built by Sir Francis Dashwood – of Hellfire Club fame – over a period of 60 years from 1740. The defining exterior feature is the rare double colonnade (see picture) which was certainly inspired by Palladio’s work in Italy such as the Palazzo Chiericati which Dashwood would have seen on his Grand Tour. Further Palladian and neo-Classical flourishes in both the house and parkland make this house worthy of protection from crude spoilation by the planners.